Chapter Six of My 2012 NaNoWriMo Attempt

Chapter Six

THRUMUMUMUMUMUMUMSHREEEEEEEEEE!

Oh, sweet Jeebus, "Magic Carpet Ride" as interpreted by the entire membership of the International Plumbers' Union while drunk. And on acid. In the midst of an epileptic seizure. I nearly fell out of bed from the godawful noise. Why hadn't giant glowing beach towel Elvis protected me? And who the hell was messing with the pipes? And worse, why did my bedside alarm clock say eight a. m.?

"Rise and shine, little buddy," Ron shouted from the bathroom, his voice only slightly muffled by toothpaste. "Time to rub the sleep out of your eyes and greet the new day!"

Oh, of course. Ron was one of those horrible morning people.

"Who the hell are you, my mother?" I shouted back. "What happened to 'the crack of noon?'"

"Meh. You're going to squander the best part of the day. We've got things to do and places to go. Stuff to move and stuff to buy."

Slowly, painfully I attempted to focus my eyes and roll out of bed. "You know," I said, a bit blearily, "when normal people don't have to work they like to sleep in. Late."

"One," Ron said as he threw open my door, "we're not normal people and we never will be. Two, we are working, or rather, we will be once you get up and put some clothes on."

"Are you on meth or something? You're awfully chipper for a guy who spent yesterday driving around all over the state."

"Exciting times ahead, John! A new day, new beginnings, new projects, we've got to get cracking if we're going to get ahead of the game. Oh, and there's coffee and Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the kitchen."

I looked at the window and said, "thank you, Jeebus; thank you, Elvis, thank you, J. R. 'Bob' Dobbs."

"Who are you talking to?"

"Deities. My very own short duration personal saviors with whom I will be sharing a very caffeinated and very sugar-laden communion as soon as I can find my pants."

"Well, okay then."

"So are we moving your stuff this morning?" I said.

"Actually, there's good news and bad news. Mostly good news for you and some bad news for me."

"How so?

"Well, there's not a lot of my stuff to move, courtesy of the Girlfriend From Hell. Apparently, she went on a rampage after I called her, burned most of my stuff in a backyard bonfire, and now all I've got are a couple of suitcases, a trunk, that stained mattress we were using as a doggie bed, and my computer stuff. I got lucky, I suppose, but some of it is kind of smoky, so heads up. I did manage to rescue, well, you know."

"Oh, Christ," I said. "The layout."

"Yeah, the layout."

Have I mentioned that Ron is a model railroad buff? Yeah, HO scale all the way. He got into it in his early teens and over the years has amassed a huge, and I mean huge, collection of brass locomotives worth thousands of dollars along with rolling stock, miles of track, tons of scenery, and who knows how many itty-bitty metal figures. When he got into model construction, he built what amounted to a small city's worth of structures complete with weathering, advertisements, graffitti, electric lighting, myriads of geeky goodness. It's his pride, his joy, and his singular obsession-- excluding inappropriate women-- an entire world on a nine by twelve foot table.

"Where is it now?" I asked.

"You know the front room across from the living room slash library?"

"What I assumed was the dining room? Yeah."

"It's has been officially commandeered and designated the Train Room."

"Oh. Okay. I've never been one for formal dinners, anyway," I said. "I'm more into microwave burritos and paper plates. Where's all the stuff now?"

"It's here. Downstairs. My sister's husband helped me load it into his truck and those four guys from across the street helped me get it into the house."

"Oh, yeah? Was Sarah with them?"

"No, unfortunately, Ron said with a slight leer. "She's pretty hot in a goth trash sort of way. Oh, who am I kidding? Given the chance, I'd hit that so hard whoever pulled me out would be the rightful king of all England."

"Uh..."

"And can you imagine a threesome with her and Tara? Oh, man! What do you want to bet they both have piercings in places you wouldn't expect?"

"Changing the subject," I said. "What, exactly, are we doing today if we're not moving you in?"

"I'm thinking it's time we check out The Little Old Winemaker and spend a little money."

"Color me confused, but who do we know that makes wine? Hell, who do we know that drinks wine, unless it's Boone's Farm? Is this person a consultant or something?"

"The Little Old Winemaker is not a person, it's this funky store in Lakeside that sells beer and winemaking supplies. The guy in Goochland was telling me about it, said it was your one-stop shopping source for all things booze-related."

"What, the guy with the still?"

"The very one. He's done it all: cider, beer, wine; in fact, he had such good luck with wine he wanted to branch out into brandy. He even had wooden casks for aging. You know, we might want to think about that at some point."

"Uh, don't count your barrels just yet. We've got a lot of things to do before we can even think of trying out our still."

"Exactly, and time's a-wastin'. Grab your shopping list and let's see what's what."

I got my notebook, filled a big travel mug with coffee, and grabbed a couple of doughnuts Okay, three doughnuts, but it was early and my blood sugar and caffeine levels were nowhere near optimum.

When Ron said the place was "funky," he wasn't exaggerating. Set back in a little strip mall parallel to Lakeside Drive, The Little Old Winemaker was completely at odds with its surroundings. It was as if a tiny piece of 19^th Century rural Bavaria had been magically transported to Richmond and plopped down to live placidly amid the appliance stores, service stations, soul food eateries, and 7-11s. Funky, too, were the smells we encountered as soon as we passed through the door: yeasty bread, dusty grains, a faint whiff of wood smoke, a hint of ripe apples... I was reminded of when I used to visit my grandfather's tobacco farm as a child and play in the hay loft. The walls were darkened wood and covered in advertising posters for obscure beers, exotic wines, and vineyards local and foreign. Well-dressed, soft-spoken customers browsed the aisles and shelves.

It was charming.

"So what are we looking for," Ron asked.

"Well, yeast for one, a couple of ten gallon fermenters, which are just glorified food grade plastic buckets, unless you want to go the stainless or copper route."

"Are they better?

"I don't know if they're better, but they're certainly more expensive."

"Then plastic works for me."

"Let's see, lids for the buckets, a couple of airlocks..."

"Airlocks?"

"One way valves. When we start fermenting stuff, we want a way to keep out the airborne nasties while venting all the carbon dioxide we'll be making."

"This is getting complicated," Ron said.

"I warned you. And we're going to need cheesecloth for filtering, some kind of sanitizing agent for the buckets, some plastic tubing, oh, and a decent grade hydrometer. Then there's corn, malted barley, rye, rye malt..."

"Enough. Let's start shopping," Ron sighed.

The store's layout was a little confusing, but the sales associate was busy briefing this nice-looking gay couple on the finer points of home-aging sherry and port, so Ron and I fumbled around for a bit before finding all the stuff we needed. That was fine as far as I was concerned, since even a cursory glance would tell any astute home brewer exactly what we were planning on doing. Let's be clear: home distilling is illegal. Highly illegal. The Feds don't care if it's a little or a lot; if you're running a still to make alcohol for human consumption, regardless of the quantity and regardless of whether you drink it or sell it or give it away, you're breaking several state and federal laws and can wind up in a dank, dark prison cell for a very long time. Someday the laws may change, just as they did for wine- and beer-making, but someday is not today. I was a little nervous.

We hauled our stuff over to the main counter.

"Okay," said the clerk. "What have we got here?" He began muttering to himself as he tallied up our purchases, then said, "You know this is a Tralles hydrometer, right?"

"What's a Tralles hydrometer?" Ron asked

The clerk looked at Ron for a second. "You use a Tralles hydrometer to figure out the alcoholic content of a liquid based on its specific gravity. You take pre- and post-fermentation readings and from that you can calculate..." His voice trailed off when he saw the expression on my face.

"You're not..." the clerk said.

I stood there open-mouthed.

The clerk's voice dropped to a whisper. "Because I don't want to know if you are."

I stood there at a loss for words.

"Let's speak hypothetically for a moment," he said, glancing to his left and right. "Purely hypothetically."

"Okay."

"If someone, not you two, but someone, wanted to, oh, let's say, ferment a large volume of material really fast, he might want something a little more powerful than champagne yeast."

"Okay."

"He might want a variety of what is called a turbo yeast. It's fast, it's resistant to alcohol, which means it can survive when the concentration is high and make more alcohol, and most importantly, it comes complete with a slew of additional nutrients and pH adjusters so as to make futzing with it significantly trivial. It can survive. It can kick ass. You, uh, he just adds the yeast at the right moment and at the right temperature and lets it do it's thing."

"Okay."

"But it's tricky for wine-making. It brings things to a ferment really fast and it generates a lot of alcohol. A lot. A wine-maker could, entirely by accident, ruin his otherwise perfectly good wine by turning it into something only useful if he were interested in distilling it, which he would not be, in which case the winemaker would not have wine. That would be sad. You understand?"

"Okay." I smiled a little.

"A wine-maker would have to be extremely careful with a turbo yeast or he's going to wind up with a high-proof wine that would be completely undrinkable as it was. It would be beyond insolent and ill-mannered; it would be a pugnacious bully. One would be overwhelmed by the alcohol burn. And that's not what one looks for in a good wine. Excuse me for a moment."

The clerk disappeared behind a curtain then returned holding a couple of test tubes sealed with black plastic screw caps. Inside them was a noxious-looking brown slurry.

"This is a new product, a strain called THX-1138 from the W. A. Sallee labs in Chicago. It's for experimental wine-making purposes only, though it may possibly have other uses. You may also find it... amusing." The clerk smiled and handed me some stapled papers. "And these are the instructions. They reiterate what I said about it being tricky for wine-making. Be sure to read them carefully."

"Okay," I said.

The clerk rang up our purchases, smiled again, and said, "Well, gentlemen, I look forward to hearing about your disasters in... wine-making. Please keep me posted." He winked.

"What just happened?" asked Ron, as we carried our stuff to the truck.

"In legal terms, I think we just gained an accessory before the fact."

"Is that a good thing?"

"I guess we'll find out." I looked at the instructions the clerk had handed me:

So You Want To Make Some Tasty Booze: A Guide to the Effective Use of THX-1138 in Home Distilling.

"It's a good thing, Ron. Let's go buy some sugar."

Chapter Five of My 2012 NaNoWriMo Attempt

Chapter Five

"Behold!" Ron said as he walked me to the bed of the pick-up truck.

"Ooo. Aah. Ohh." I said sarcastically. "A bunch of cardboard boxes and a big-ass something or other under a moving pad. I swoon. I plotz."

"You will in a minute," Ron said. "Look behind the curtain."

I wasn't sure I wanted to touch the filthy, smelly quilt covering the whatever it was, but sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves, say what the fuck, and go for it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I lifted a convenient corner.

The setting sun glinted gloriously off the shiniest conglomeration of metalwork I had ever seen.

"Is that what I think it is?" I said.

"It is, indeed. That, my friend, is a genuine, all-copper, hand-hammered, hand-riveted, hand-constructed, never before used twenty gallon pot still. And it's ours."

"Sweet Jesus, it's beautiful," I said, slowly pulling off the cover. "That's a work of art. It's functional sculpture at its finest. It's glowing and shiny and curvaceous and sexy and I want to marry it. Where the hell did you find it?"

"Four words to know and live by: 'Craigslist is our friend.' Some guy out in Goochland bought it and then had second thoughts or something. That, or his wife raised hell when she saw the price tag. Anyway, he put it up for sale at about half of its original cost and I haggled him down a little more by waving some cash under his nose."

"It's... it's... beautiful. I'm afraid to touch it."

"Well, cover it up. No sense in advertising to the neighborhood that we've got a still. That's just asking for trouble. We'll move it in after the sun sets, safe from prying eyes."

"Actually" I said, looking around, "we should move it in now. In these parts, if you leave something of any value lying around unsecured it's considered a donation to the community. Copper is a big ticket item in distressed neighborhoods, which is why you'll never find electrical wiring in an empty house."

Ron scanned the anarchists' collective across the street and said, "I see what you mean. Okay, let's move it."

"What's in all the other boxes?"

"Oh, well the big one houses the still condenser assembly and the others? Well, take a look."

Ron reached into his pocket, pulled out a Swiss Army knife, slit the tape on one of the boxes, and uncovered a dozen one liter Florence flasks.

"Aren't they cool?" Ron said.

"Well, yeah, I suppose, but what do you want with a bunch of round-bottomed flasks, unless..."

"Exactly! You said Ball Mason jars were trite and passé and, let's face it, with the exception of Crystal Head Vodka, most liquor bottles are not particularly exciting, so when I saw these on Craigslist..."

"You bought a shitload."

"I bought a shitload. A double shitload. About five hundred of them, to be exact. For cash, so there's no paper trail, and at a huge discount. Incidentally, there are more where these came from in case we should need them." Ron was grinning from ear to ear. "I could have gotten a bunch of old-school ceramic jugs, but they all had labels and needed some serious cleaning, so I figured that was just too much damn work. These things, on the other hand, are almost sterile and laboratory-ready."

"I've got to admit, I think you're on to something. Then again, we're not going to have anything to put in them for at least a couple of weeks and maybe longer if things don't go well. There are about ten thousand details we've got to consider." The immensity of what we were about to do swept over me and it must have shown on my face.

"And there go the negative waves again. You need to embrace the power of positive thinking or you're going to become an old man before your time. Visualize. Actualize. Synthesize."

"Yeah, and in the meantime I'm tired as shit and we've still got a bunch of boxes and one highly illegal still to move."

"So let's get cracking," Ron said.

To my surprise, we got everything into the basement with only a minimum of trouble. The boxes of flasks were easy; as far as weight was concerned they were inconsequential. The main body of the still, on the other hand, though not particularly heavy, was big, bulky, slippery, and awkward as hell to move, but after only a couple of sphincter-clenching moments when it didn't look as though it would fit through the door, we got it down the stairs and into position.

"Look at it," Ron said. "That's our future gleaming there."

"That was almost poetic, ya big lug," I said. "Only, let's hope our future doesn't involve prison cells and big bad men in need of butt buddies. I'm fragile." I thought for a moment then looked at Ron. "Now what?"

"A couple of things. I've got to get the pick-up back to my sister's husband and I'm thinking we'd better get a padlock for the basement door just in case."

"Just in case of what?" I asked.

"Just... in case. Nosy neighbors. Wandering landlords. Desperate crackheads. Whatever."

"Based on what I've seen, our landlord is not apt to wander anywhere on foot."

"I'm still going to pick one up on the way back. You need anything?"

I stared at the still shining in the center of our basement floor and thought for a moment. What did I need? The name of a good lawyer? Just... in case? A copy of Virginia's legal code? A bottle of Valium? Zen mind? A nap?

"Nah, I'm good. I'm going to go upstairs, set up my bedroom, then sleep for about a hundred years."

"Uh, don't forget I've still got stuff to move," Ron said.

"Tomorrow, dude. Tomorrow."

Ron glanced at his wristwatch. "Yeah, you're probably right. I'll drag your ass out of bed somewhere around, what, the crack of noon?"

"And not before. Thanks."

Ron clomped up the wooden stairs, leaving me in quiet solitude.

I could hear a faint music and a police siren in the distance. A couple of neighborhood dogs barked half-heartedly, then all was silence as a profound sense of melancholy overcame me.

"Well, buddy," I addressed the still. "It's just you and me. I suppose we're going to become close friends, eventually, but right now I'm just a bit overwhelmed by everything."

The house creaked in response.

"I suppose if Ron is right and there really is a market for artisanal booze, then all this is going to be the start of an exciting new venture with us right smack on the cutting edge, and let's be honest, I've never been on the cutting edge of much of anything ever. I should be thrilled as all get-out."

The still said nothing.

"But let me tell you something: I'm not. I'm not fond of unpredictability and this little project is about as unpredictable as anything I've ever encountered. And yeah, maybe Jobs and Wozniak started out in a garage, but I bet they had access to working plumbing. I have no idea what's going to happen the first time I flush the toilet in this place. Maybe a sewage apocalypse. Or worse."

The dogs started barking again, then quieted.

"I'm broke, my girlfriend is long gone, I don't have any family to speak of and no close friends, except for Ron, and here I am starting a new life on the wrong side of town in one of the world's older and shadier professions. 'John Griggs, potential urban moonshiner.' Sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit."

Silence.

"On the other hand, I'll be my own boss and at least have the chance of making some money without having to say 'you want fries with that?'"

More silence.

"Oh, well. It's getting late and as much as I hate to leave you alone on your first night here, I'm exhausted. See ya in the morning." I trudged up the stairs feeling more tired than I'd felt in years.

The bedroom was in total disarray, though the Four Stooges had been kind enough to assemble my bed, even to the point of making a half-assed attempt at fitting it with sheets and blankets, which was a little creepy now that I thought about it. Unfortunately, they had then piled it high with clothes, boxes of books, a couple of suitcases, and my two nightstands. I appreciated the effort, I did, but really... the dresser was facing backwards, its drawers against the wall, and my writing desk was standing on end in front of the closet. An errant box of dishes peeked out at me from under the bed. The floor was covered in bits of cardboard and packing tape, my lamps were nowhere in sight, and the whole scene was more than a little stark, gloomy, and depressing, lit as it was by a single bare bulb in the ceiling.

"You're going to want curtains."

"Sweet screaming Jesus!" I shouted, then whirled around to face the bedroom door, my heart pounding, adrenalin coursing through my veins.

"Relax, man," said Sarah, leaning against the door frame. "The serial killers hang out on Southside this time of night. You're reasonably safe here, though if I were you I'd start locking my front door. Otherwise, you'll attract an unsavory element... like me."

"You scared the shit out of me."

Sarah did an exaggerated neck-craning thing. "I dunno... your floor and pants look pretty shit-free to me, but either way, you're still going to need curtains."

"I... Curtains? What are you talking about?"

"Well, whether you know it or not, right now you're putting on a show for the whole neighborhood. The way things are lit, you've got a kind of shadow puppet thing going on." Sarah started poking through some boxes. "Do you even have curtains?"

"Probably not. My girlfriend took care of that kind of stuff, uh, back when I had a girlfriend. She was the one with the domesticity gene. I'm more of a patterned sheets in the window kind of guy."

"Well, I think we can do better than that." Sarah pulled out a huge black and orange beach towel emblazoned with a young, svelte Elvis somebody had given me as a gag gift many years ago.

"Yeah, this will do nicely," Sarah said. "Nothing like sleeping peacefully while being watched over by a glowing King. She moved one of my nightstands, climbed on top, pulled a tack hammer and some nails out of her back pocket, and fastened the towel into place.

"You came prepared."

"Told you you were putting on a show. Moe was concerned you were going to undress and start wagging your dick around or something, so I figured I'd better take action before he had a stroke. He comes across as homophobic, but really, he's so deep in the closet that he's finding Christmas presents."

"That was entirely too much information."

"Wasn't it, though? Cool platform bed, by the way."

"Thanks. I picked it up at La Difference a couple of years ago. It's the only decent piece of furniture I own. The rest is thrift shop chic."

Sarah held out her hand and waited until I took it to help her down from the nightstand. I noted the faint aroma of sandalwood. "Yeah, Curly liked it because there are so many places to attach ropes. He's got a mild bondage fetish, loves to be tied down. Funny how so many otherwise macho men like to be the passive ones in bed."

"Again, too much information."

"Then you definitely don't want to know how many piercings he's got where."

"Yeah, I'll pass on that."

"Thought you might. Want a hand getting your bedroom organized?"

"Yeah, that would be great."

With Sarah orchestrating, it took us all of half an hour to get the place into some semblance of order.

"Damn," I said, surveying the results. "I could live here."

Sarah looked around. "It's a little too multi-purpose for my tastes, what with the desk and computer and printer and all, but get rid of that shit, add some mood lighting, a canopy, maybe a bar and small refrigerator, and yeah, you've got yourself a fuck pad."

"Uh-huh," was all I could say.

She threw herself on the mattress exposing a great deal of bare abdomen and what looked to be a diamond navel ring. "Oh, yeah, baby," she said. "That's memory foam. Nice stuff. I take it back; this is a fuck pad. And I would know."

"Uh, I'll take your word for it."

"Oh, you won't have to do that. She shot me a huge grin. "But it's late and I've got a pirate radio station to get on the air so, we'll pick this up tomorrow. Later, dude!"

And with that, Sarah was off, leaving me to wonder what just happened.

Chapter Four of My 2012 NaNoWriMo Attempt

Chapter Four

I hate moving. Really, really hate it. It's right up there with my hatred of Hitler and Stalin, cancer and world hunger, military actions and people who hog the passing lane on the Interstate, which is why I do it as little as possible. Part of the problem is I have too much stuff, books mostly, which translates to dozens and dozens of boxes to be packed, sealed, lifted, transported, lifted again, opened, unpacked, and arranged in some semblance of order. That's the ideal; what usually happens is I become overwhelmed, give up, and just dump them in huge piles all around whatever living space I happen to be occupying. My poor ex-girlfriend waged a running battle with books in the bathroom since one of my favorite places to read is in the tub.

"Sometimes I think you care more about these damned books than you do about me," she used to say. Well, scream would be a more accurate description. "Can't you at least get rid of the ones you've read? Why do you have to keep them for so long?"

Because. I'd rather drown kittens than lose a book.

She didn't understand. Margaret was not a reader. Fashion magazines, sure. Glamour, People, Us, things like that, check. All of them instantly forgettable; all of them entirely disposable. But unless by chance she was reading the current self-help tome du jour, and that only happened maybe once every two years, she never touched a book unless it was to move mine out of her way. "There's no room to sleep on the bed! Or sit! Or walk, for God's sake! What the hell? The sofa is not a bookshelf. Why is Norman Spinrad in the bathroom sink?" She couldn't wrap her head around the idea that books are my friends, my children. Sure, some of them are bastard children, misshapen and malformed, but I love them none the less.

In all fairness, she was somewhat justified in her resentment. I had-- I have-- books everywhere. Stacked on shelves, stacked in front of shelves, on my desk, on her desk, on the kitchen counter, in the kitchen cabinets, scattered across the dining room table, the bathroom, the bedroom; virtually every horizontal surface was (and is) a potential (and actual) book depository. On the other hand, love me, love my books. Margaret chose neither.

Here's a confession for you, to my shame: under my bed there's a huge trunk filled with yellowing paperbacks I haven't opened since the late 'Eighties, but in no way am I willing to get rid of any of them. The fear is I might want to consult one of them someday at, say, three in the morning, when the bookstores and library are closed and in my mind that would be inconvenient at the least, mindbogglingly annoying at the worst. I do not suffer either well. Also, in this post-literate age I live in constant fear of Fahrenheit 451 becoming a reality. This should tell you the extent of my obsession.

Which is one of the reasons I broke down and got myself a Kindle. Three thousand books at my fingertips occupying less than the space of your average self-published poetry chapbook, plus the ability to purchase books 24/7/365 and store as many on my hard drive as memory will hold; it's online crack for bibliophiles.

Yeah, my name is John, I'm powerless over books, and my life and that of those around me have become unmanageable.

Anyway, the point of all this is I hate to move and it's mostly because of the books. Mostly. The other annoying thing is every time I have to move I have to do it by myself and that just plain sucks.

Okay, confession two: I have a low threshold for boredom and moving things from one place to another is boring. And tiring. And sweaty. And just plain no fun. Yeah, beneath my aging exterior beats the heart of a restless thirteen year old without access to television.

And on this day in particular, a singularly irritated thirteen year old.

Where the hell was Ron? Ron knows how much I hate to move and I'd been counting on him to help out, but he was nowhere to be found, leaving me with a U-Haul full of weighty boxes and rickety thrift store furniture.

"Hey! You must be the new guy."

I turned around to see a punk rock slash wet dream by way of Goth culture. She was tall and lanky with a Bettie Page haircut, black Doc Marten's, strategically torn skinny jeans, a ripped black camisole with plunging neckline, ghostly pale make-up with heavy eye shadow, and a biker jacket that looked as if it had been torn off a dying Hell's Angel.

"Yeah, I guess I am. And you..."

"And you look like you could use a little help."

"Man, that is the understatement of the decade."I said. "My partner was supposed to be here an hour ago, but I guess he had better things to do."

"Partner?" She gave me a lascivious wink.

"Oh, it's not what you think. We're strictly hetero, 'not that there's anything wrong with that,'" I said in my best Seinfeld voice."He's kind of my business partner when he's not pulling a disappearing act."

"What business?" She peered around to see inside the U-Haul.

"Uh, well, I suppose I'm not at liberty to discuss that at present," I said.

"A start-up or something? Computer programming? Data mining? Amateur porn production? I've got a friend who'll do amazing things on camera with a can of Betty Crocker frosting and some whipped cream. And she'll work cheap."

"Uh..."

"You're not in the recreational pharmaceutical industry, by chance?" Sarah shot me a huge grin.

"Good God, no! Why would you think that?" My heart skipped a beat.

"Only that there are a limited number of reasons why people choose to live in this neighborhood willingly and that's one of them, but not to worry. It would be definitely cool if you were."

"No, no. Nothing as exciting as that, I'm afraid."

"You should think about it, ya know. Those berries in your back yard pack an... interesting... punch."

"So you know about those?"

"Hell, yeah! Oh, hell yeah! Everybody in this neighborhood knows about 'em. They're kind of a thing at parties. The woman who lived here before you used to make a kind of kick-ass wine out of them and give it away to whoever asked."

"Really?"

"Really! Oh, I'm Sarah, by the way. Sarah Sparks. I run a kind of anarchists' collective across the street when I'm not pulling espressos for Instagram addicted hipsters on Cary Street." Sarah pointed to a somewhat dilapidated house with four gargantuan Harley-Davidsons in the front yard.

"Well, nice to meet you, Sarah Sparks. I'm John Griggs, occasional technical writer and, currently, pissed-off moving man. Pleased to meet you." We shook hands.

"A sweaty moving man, too, it appears. But that's okay; I like 'em sweaty. You want some help with all those boxes?"

I hesitated before saying anything. Sarah didn't look like the weight lifting type, but she did look like the punch you in the face type if I pointed that out."Well, yeah, that would be great, but are you sure you have the, uh, time?"

Sarah put her fingers to her lips and let out with a bloodcurdling, earsplitting whistle. A moment later four huge, hulking guys in dirty jeans, faded leathers, and jailhouse tattoos emerged from the house across the street and came running over toward us.

"Boxes," she said, pointing to the U-Haul. "Inside. Now."

Without a word, the guys immediately started off-loading the boxes and furniture and hauling them into the house, the faint smell of marijuana and malt liquor following in their wake.

"My Stooges," Sarah said. "I forget their names, so I call 'em Larry, Moe, Curly, and sometimes Shemp. Shemp and Curly kind of alternate coming and going."

"Which is who?"

"Doesn't matter. They're all four of them big and dumb and pretty much interchangeable."

"And handy," I said. "No household should be without one."

Sarah laughed. "Damn straight! And they're pretty low maintenance to boot, for the most part. Just fuel 'em, feed 'em, and fuck 'em as necessary. The rest takes care of itself. And as an added bonus, they come with their own reefer and beer."

I didn't quite know how to respond. Miss Manners doesn't cover conversations like this one; then again, Miss Manners had probably never encountered an anarchists' collective. Hell, I've never encountered an anarchists' collective, much less one run by Joan Jett's evil twin, but I wasn't about to complain. The U-Haul was being emptied at blinding speed.

"Where do you want the boxes labeled 'books?'" a voice boomed from the apartment.

"You got pizza? Or beer?" another voice boomed.

"We've got beer, you knucklehead. What we need is pizza," a third voice boomed.

"You morons gonna help with these books?"

"Now you see why I call 'em 'The Stooges.'" Sarah shot me another huge grin. "They can read and converse in full sentences, too. And they play a pretty mean game of D & D, when they're in the mood, except they all want to be half-orc fighters with dragon scale armor."

"What do they do when they're not in the mood?" I asked.

"You're better off not knowing and we'd better go in and supervise before they find your liquor supply. Otherwise, you'll get a live demonstration."

The Three Stooges (four, if you count Shemp) were nothing if not energetic. They had my stuff moved astoundingly fast, wrangling even the heaviest boxes with an ease and grace that reminded me of ballet, if there were such a thing as two hundred and eighty pound ballet dancers. Sarah and I didn't have to lift a finger, except once to dial the nearest pizza delivery joint.

All six of us were sitting on the front porch, finishing off the pizza crusts and drinking lukewarm beer while the Stooges described their latest Ravenloft campaign in excruciating detail, when Ron the Nerd finally made his appearance.

"Jesus God, John," Ron said, as he exited a pick-up truck that had seen better days. "Who are your friends?"

"Our new neighbors. Come and say 'hi,'" I said. As Ron mounted the porch, I couldn't resist whispering, "And don't show any fear. They can smell it. It'll make them go berserk."

Ron actually gulped as I went through the Stooge introductions, grimacing as he shook each powerful hand in turn.

"And this is Sarah, the ringleader of this motley crew."

"Motley Crüe?" one of the Stooges said. "I know those guys! They're par-TAY animals!"

"Down, Curly. Up, Ron," Sarah said when she noticed Ron's attention was focused on her cleavage.

"Oh, uh, "Ron stammered. "I was just admiring your tattoo."

"That's Neptune, King of the Seven Seas. And of my boobs. That's Curly, king of shallow graves in desolate wooded areas."

An awkward silence followed, but to his credit, Ron at least had the decency to blush. "Gotcha. No offense intended."

"Nah, I kid. Look at them all you want. I was just yanking your chain." Sarah laughed. "I'm kind of proud of the twins. Grew 'em myself."

"Okay, now that we're all friends again, where the hell have you been? You do remember we were supposed to move in today, right?" I said.

"I didn't forget, but man oh, man, something came up that you're never going to believe! Uh, could we talk privately for a moment?"

"Okay, guys," Sarah said to the Stooges. "That's our cue to leave. These boys have business to discuss and I'm in the mood for a little Risk. Nothing like some world domination to round out an afternoon."

Chapter Three of My 2012 NaNoWriMo Attempt

Chapter Three

"Well, that was different," I said. "And why the hell were you haggling with the guy? Jesus, he was pissed off. What if he had a gun or something?"

We were headed to Ron's car.

"He wasn't going to use a gun," Ron said. "I did a little fact checking and found out he needs money, really, really bad and really, really fast. No sense in paying full price if we don't have to."

"Agreed, especially since you're the one who's paying. But still, what a character. He's the kind of guy who'd get profiled in The New Yorker if he did anything more interesting than drink, smoke, and spit."

Ron shot me a look. "He's the kind of guy who'd get profiled in Gotcha for running an all-male animal prostitution ring."

I snickered. "Yeah, well, there's that. 'Otto the Landlord's All-Cat Cathouse.'"

"Or worse," Ron added. " He's the owner and operator of 'Uncle Tickle's Secret Touching Club.'"

We got in the car and started heading towards the Willow Lawn Starbucks via Monument Avenue.

"So what's the deal with the berries?" I said.

"I don't know, but you've got to admit, it sounds intriguing. Also a little silly. 'Farkleberry' wine. Who ever heard of such a thing? And talk about your bizarre coincidences. If this were a novel people would start booing right about now."

"Apparently not Otto's aunt and neighbors. Did the stuff sound just a little psychoactive to you?

"Yes, it did," Ron said. "And I'm thinking that merits further investigation. Deep investigation."

"Speaking of deep investigation," I said, as I shifted around in the passenger seat, "I've got a buttload of notes on distilling."

Ron glanced at me just before swerving slightly to avoid some loathsome a bright yellow Hummer's abrupt right turn.

"Don't those things come equipped with signal lights?" Ron muttered.

"'Your penis must be this small before you can buy a Hummer,'" I said as I started in on the papers in my bulging accordion file.

"Holy moley, Batman! That's a lot of notes!"

"Well, I've been doing my homework and the bottom line is this: home distilling is not as simple as you might think. In fact, there's as much art to it as science. Plus, we're going to have to buy a shitload of stuff just to get started."

"Like what?" Ron asked.

I shuffled through some papers. "Sugar, corn, malt, yeast, and, oh, boy, you don't even want to know about all the ins and outs of yeast. And we're going to need gallons of bottled water if that crap from the tap is any indication, or maybe rain water. That's a possibility. A hydrometer..."

"What's that?

"A hydrometer measures alcohol by volume. Bar owners use them to make sure the bartenders aren't watering down the liquor. We'll also need a decent-sized fermenter."

"Which is?"

"Nothing fancy, just an appropriately-sized copper or stainless steel tub into which we dump the ingredients and allow them to ferment. They don't have to be expensive, but they can be."

"What else?"

"Well, the still, and that's the big ticket item."

"Can we make one and cut some costs?"

"Well, we could, but here's the thing, Dukes of Hazzard and Li'l Abner notwithstanding, stills are fairly tricky things to build. They may look cobbled together in the movies, but every part has its purpose. Plus, use the wrong solder and everybody gets lead poisoning. You can buy smaller ones made out of beer kegs for not too much money, but you're thinking volume and for that you're going to need something in the ten to twenty gallon range at least."

"Ten to twenty gallons of what? Alcohol?"

"No, mash. The fermented stuff. That's what the still does, separates the alcohols from all the other stuff."

"You said 'alcohols.'"

"Yeah, well, you don't just make drinking alcohol when you ferment stuff. You get all kinds of other stuff, some of which distills on through. Wood alcohol, ethyl acetate, fusel oils, stuff you don't want to be drinking. You throw away the first and last parts, keep the middle, then run it through the still again. Part of the art is knowing when and what to throw away and when and what to save."

"Don't you lose a lot of stuff when you do that?"

"Yes, you do, but if you want a drinkable product, which translates to a salable product, you just deal with the loss, otherwise, people will go blind, die, and whammo! There goes your entire customer base. And, more than likely, you're going to run your product through the still at least twice with a little additional loss each time."

"Wow."

"You know how in cartoons you have a bunch of hillbillies sitting around a still with earthenware jugs marked with a triple X? Well, each X indicates one time through the still. But there's a payoff, in a sense: each run yields a higher concentration of alcohol."

"Which is a good thing, right?"

"Well, that depends. If you're just going for alcohol alone, yeah, that's a good thing, but you said you wanted something special, unique, something you can't get in a liquor store. High proof alone won't do it, unless you're just looking for your run of the mill skullbuster. Or rocket fuel. And there's already a variety of straight moonshines on the shelves. Virginia Lightning out of Culpeper. Shine On Georgia Moon. Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon. If you want to distinguish yourself, now we're talking about aging, flavor profiles, alcohol concentration versus taste, mouth feel, nuances of aroma, all sorts of things that master distillers spend years learning how to do."

"Jesus. Who knew?" Ron was starting to look a little worried.

"I sure didn't, not until I started reading up on this stuff. Did you know there's a guy in Colorado who runs a distillery and makes, of all things, a limited edition whiskey at $79.95 a fifth when you can get it? Stranahan's. It's won awards."

"Whiskey awards? There are such things? Sheesh. I just wanted to make a little moonshine, get a little cult thing going, make some quick money."

"Well, I'm starting to think that's not impossible, so long as we don't become too ambitious at first, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's a fairly steep learning curve ahead of us and the sooner we get started, the better."

"So what else do we need," Ron asked.

"Lots of odds and ends: thermometers, funnels, cheesecloth for filtering, siphon tubing, I already mentioned water, mixing vats, and bottles for our end product. Which reminds me, what were you thinking of using to put the stuff in?"

"Aren't Ball Mason jars traditional?"

"There are at least three products on the ABC store shelves in Mason jars, not to mention Mason jars seem a little low-rent to me."

"Well, we'll figure that out later." Ron was starting to sweat a little. "What else do we need?"

"We're going to need a decent heat source to operate the still. Something more powerful than a hot plate, but no open flames."

"So, a propane tank and one of those burner rings wouldn't work?"

"Hell, no! I'm not working in a closed basement with alcohol fumes and an open flame. With the volume and concentrations we'll be working with, that's a recipe for disaster. And we're going to need to do something about ventilation or even the sparks from that knife switch are going to turn us into one righteous fireball."

"So what are you thinking?

"Immersion heaters like they have on hot water tanks. They're cheap, they're safe, and they have the added advantage of giving us some significant temperature control which, by the way, is very important."

"Okay, now back to the still. You say they're difficult to construct?"

"Not difficult, exactly, but tricky. Fortunately, there's a simple solution."

"Which is?"

"We buy one."

"What, we wander down to the local still store at the mall and say 'one whiskey maker to go, please, hold the indictments?'"

"Sort of, but not exactly. We buy one online."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Not in the least. Trust me when I say there are a slew of websites offering stills for sale; they're common as sin, especially among the survivalist types. As near as I can tell, and I'm certainly no legal expert, it's not technically illegal to buy a still; it's just illegal to own one and hideously illegal to operate one."

"Well, that's some fucked-up logic. How the hell does that work?"

"I have no idea. It's just one of those weird-ass legal chimeras, like Virginia's switchblade law. It's not illegal to own a switchblade, it's just illegal to sell one; however, possession is considered prima facie evidence of intent to sell, so go figure."

"I'd rather not. It makes my brain all explody."

We managed to find a parking space in front of the Willow Lawn Starbucks with relative ease, skipped around the obnoxious three-man writers' group commandeering the best outdoor table, and proceeded to order venti non-fat lattes.

"So," Ron said. "If we're not going to build one, what's the bottom line on a still, costwise?"

"I've been thinking about that a lot. I've even done some serious comparison shopping and what I'm going to recommend is this very traditional pot still from a company in Texas. It's all copper, which is a big deal as far as avoiding off-flavors, the top comes off, so it's easy to clean, which is another big consideration. I mean, you boil twenty gallons of corn mash for a couple of hours and you have the potential for a righteous, gooey, burned-on mess. The coolest thing, though, is with the top off, you have a stand-alone fermenter. And it comes with a built-in thermometer, so it's not like it's going to need any serious modification. Except..."

"Except...?"

"Well, I told you I don't want to work with alcohol fumes and open ignition sources, not in that basement, so we're going to have to drill a couple of holes to insert some immersion heaters."

"Is that a problem?"

"You tell me."

Ron thought for a minute. "It shouldn't be. I've got tools, I've got an electric drill. I've got a little sheet metal experience. Probably the trickiest thing there is sealing the holes around the heaters so there's no leakage."

"Okay, then. Well, the still itself, complete with condensing unit and thermometer, is going to run about five hundred dollars."

Ron winced a little.

"And then there are all the peripheral supplies I mentioned earlier. All told, just to get started, I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of xxxx dollars.

Ron winced again.

"Give or take a few hundred," I said. "And that's not accounting for our time and labor. You sure you want to do this?"

"Well," Ron sighed. "It takes money to make money and it beats hanging out in bars. Where do we begin?"

"We order the still, start laying in all the other supplies, try to make that rat hole of an apartment livable, start fermenting some mash, and do a trial run or two. We time it right and we should be able to run our first batch just as our still arrives."

"Well, then, as Gary Gilmore once said, 'let's do it.'"

Chapter Two of My 2012 NaNoWriMo Effort

Chapter Two

"You the guys?"

We'd been waiting patiently at the corner of Cary and Randolph, Ron and I, as patiently as I wait for anything, when the purple hearse drove up emitting blue exhaust and the reek of cheap cigars.

"Uh, maybe," I said. "You the owner?"

The driver was a large... oh, let's be honest... an immensely fat man in cargo shorts and a too-small sweat-stained undershirt. He belched loudly, sucked on his cigar, eyeballed us for a moment, then blew an immense cloud of smoke in our direction.

"Yeah, I'm the fuckin' owner. Ya wanna see this place or what?"

"I'd like to check it out, sure."

He grunted, grabbed a set of keys off the passenger seat, and held them out to me with his kielbasa-sized fingers. "I'll be waiting for ya here. Don't take too fuckin' long 'cause I got things ta do."

"That's quite a ride you've got there," Ron said.

"Fuck you, asswipe."

"Yeah, Ron," I whispered. "Don't. Be. An. Asswipe."

"Okay, okay," Ron said, stifling a snicker. "Unclencheth thine sphincter."

The apartment was a run-down two-story affair, dim and dusty, with some random pieces of long-forgotten and well-worn furniture scattered about, but obscenely spacious for this part of Richmond.

"Bookshelves," Ron said, as we glanced into the a room facing the front. "The living room is full of bookshelves."

"The living room is full of pre-Columbian cinder blocks and pine planks," I said. "And how do you know this is the living room?"

"I hereby declare this to be the living room slash library. So it is written and so it shall be."

"Let's not get too possessive too fast," I said. "We've got a specific set of needs and you get attached to things whether they're reasonable or not. Remember what happened when you bought all those Zunes."

"Well, how was I supposed to know they'd be the electronic equivalent of an Edsel?"

"And that damned leather jacket you shelled out a thousand bucks for."

"Hey, it was vintage and it looked cool."

"Yeah, but when you wore it you looked like the bastard love child of Marlon Brando and Maynard G. Krebs."

Ron sighed. "Well, it's completely shredded now, thanks to the Girlfriend from Hell."

"And the world is indebted to her for that. What's back here?"

'Back here' turned out to be an immense kitchen space.

I glanced around. "Uh, not the most up-to-date I've ever seen."

"Pink? Ron said. "Who the hell has matching pink appliances?"

"A gay couple from the 'Fifties, perhaps?"

The refrigerator, the stove, a chest freezer, even the double sink were a shocking shade of pink. There were even a few small, heavily-used appliances on the white Formica counter, including a mixer, a milkshake maker, and an industrial-looking blender, all in pink and all clashing fiercely with the mint-green walls.

"No dishwasher? Ron said.

"We've each got two." I held up my hands.

"You so suck."

I wandered over to the sink and turned on the faucet.

Which was a mistake.

You know the opening to Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride?" The part with the shuddering, pounding, shrieking feedback just before "I like to dream, yes, yes / Right between my sound machine..."? Yeah, that. For a minute or so, that was the yammering of the pipes before a sputtering stream of murky, brownish gunk issued from the faucet.

"Jesus God!" Ron said. "What the hell was that?"

"That," I said, "is an omen."

Ron joined me at the sink. "Oh."

"'Oh' is right." I shut off the faucet. "Next question: what's with the back yard?"

I wiped the window above the sink with my sleeve, dislodging several dead flies in the process, and gazed upon a vast jungle of overgrown weeds and tangled bushes, some with scattered white flowers, the rest harboring large, shiny black berries.

"One thing's for sure," I said. "We're going to need a compass to take out the trash."

Ron stared at the overgrowth. "Jesus God, there could be an entire lost civilization out there. Pygmy suburbanites with ways different from our own. Or something."

"I guess we'll never know because there's no way in hell I'm ever going out there," I said. "I prefer to confront nature from a safe distance, say, The Discovery Channel or online. That's a spider and snake paradise if I ever saw one."

"Well, we'll deal with that later, if at all. What I'm curious about is whats behind Doors Number One and Two."

Door number one opened on a pantry of sorts, empty shelves, some prehistoric cleaning supplies, a rusting mop bucket with a particularly toxic-looking scum in the bottom, and a variety of rodent droppings. Door number two, however...

"There's a basement," Ron said. "A big one." Wooden steps led down into Stygian darkness.

"Where's the light?" I said. "Oh, shit, check it out." Ancient porcelain insulators stuck out of the wall, supporting what appeared to be asbestos-covered wiring. A large Frankenstein laboratory-style knife switch completed the circuit.

"Oh, this is so not good," I said.

"Relax. Obviously, the place hasn't burned down yet."

"The operative word here being 'yet.'" I took a deep breath, grabbed the switch, and braced myself for flying sparks and humming generators.

The lights came on.

"Well, that was anticlimatic," Ron said.

As was the basement. I don't know what I expected, maybe an operating table with restraining straps surrounded by unfathomably complex laboratory equipment, maybe a fully outfitted S & M dungeon, but what we found was a slightly musty, partially finished basement with linoleum flooring, knotty pine walls, a large furnace, a water heater, a washer and dryer in pink, and a tool bench running the length of the room. Pipes and duct work ran helter skelter beneath the ceiling. In the corner was a large galvanized sink next to a sump pump. The only odd thing was the windows, of which there were several; they had been painted over with the same mint-green as the kitchen walls.

"We're in business," Ron said.

"What?" I stared at Ron in amazement. "This place is a dump." I walked over to the sink, turned the tap with some effort, and covered my ears as the pipes began to rattle and thrum. Oozing brown sludge splattered the drain.

"Yeah, but it's cheap, it's spacious, and the basement is perfect for our little, uh, business venture. Hell, with a little TLC and elbow grease this place could be downright livable."

"Only if they sell elbow grease in fifty gallon drums."

"Negative waves, man. You've got to stop with the negative waves. Dumpiness works in our favor. It's just another distressed property in another distressed neighborhood. So long as we're not cooking meth and filling the area with toxic fumes, who's going to suspect or even care if we're running an illicit distillery here? Hell, our neighbors might wind up being our best customers."

"I suppose you're right, but still, I don't know."

"You got a better idea in our price range?" Ron said. "Look, we'll stock up on Pine-Sol and Lemon Pledge, scrub the place from top to bottom, add some thrift shop furniture, and call it home. Besides, we not going for glamorous digs; we just want a place to eat, sleep, and make illicit liquor quietly and quickly. McMansions come later."

"Okay, okay. Trendy squalor it is."

"Cool. Now let's check out the upstairs."

The second story was, well, interesting, consisting as it did of two huge rooms filled with wooden furniture and bric-a brac on opposite sides of the narrow hallway. Someone with borderline hoarding tendencies had stacked piles of odd pieces of driftwood, aged barn timbers, and 19^th Century wooden farm implements along the walls of both rooms. Everywhere I looked I could see dusty spiderwebs.

"Interesting décor," I muttered.

"Actually," Ron said, "it kind of is, in an Addams Family kind of way. A little artistic arrangement and we've got a showplace."

"A showplace for whom? The police? ABC agents? The BATF?"

"Well, a showplace for us. Maybe a few female acquaintances or something."

"You're thinking about Tara again, aren't you?" I said.

"Maybe."

"Dude, you have got to stop that. This place will never be a love shack and Tara is never going to be your love slave. Give it up." I brushed a few cobwebs off my sleeve.

Ron sighed, a bit dramatically as far as I was concerned, but said no more on the subject. We continued our exploration.

"Ya know," Ron said, "one of these front rooms will make a great model railroad layout. It's got enough room for a workbench and some display shelves as well." I noted the dreamy look on his face.

"'Will.' You said 'will."

"Well, yeah." Ron looked at me.

"So, we're renting this place."

"Well, yeah. I think so. Big basement, decent kitchen, some furnishings, some appliances, roomy, what's not to like?"

I snorted. "Even though it may burn up in the middle of the night while we lie in our beds helplessly contorted from tetanus as the neighbors loot our valuables and later hold unspeakable rituals with our charred skulls?"

"We don't have any valuables."

"Okay," I said. "Let the record show I remain dubious, but you're the money guy in this instance. I live from one irregular paycheck to the next. You're the one with the steady income."

"Noted," Ron said. "Let's see a man about a house."

"Oh, and John?" Ron said as we stepped out onto the front porch. "I swear to you you won't regret this."

"Ron, I already do."

To my amazement, our future landlord was still out front in his purple hearse, puffing on another vile-smelling cigar and taking occasional swigs from an ill-concealed bottle of whiskey. Ron walked up to the driver's window, wrinkling his nose a bit at the combination of smoke and stale liquor.

"So," Ron started. "What do you want for this place?"

Future Landlord made a disgusting hocking noise and spat onto the pavement in front of Ron's feet. "I'm thinkin' nine hunnerd a month, you pay two months in advance and another month for a security deposit."

"And that gets us what, exactly?"

"Hey, asswipe. Did you even read the fuckin' ad? Ya get the whole fuckin' place, everything around it, and all the crap in it. Ya want a discount on the rent, ya do the yard work, ya clean the gutters once inna while, ya clean out the upstairs, and I'll knock off a couple a hunnerd bucks a month. That's a helluva deal. But don't be calling me alla time for maintenance and shit and don't do nuthin' that brings down the police. I got better things to do than deal wit' you two nitwits."

"'Nitwits,'" I whispered to Ron. "He's got us pegged."

Ron shushed me over his shoulder, then, turning back to Future Landlord, said, "Three thousand dollars in cash now, we do the maintenance, we clean and paint, and you charge us five hundred a month thereafter. That seems fair."

Future Landlord grimaced and spat again. "Fair, my ass. That's a prime piece o' property there. Nice central location. Cops patrol the area pretty regular so there ain't no crime to speak of and the firehouse is around the corner. Gimme eight hunnerd."

"Judging from the wiring, it's a good thing the firehouse is just around the corner. A building inspector would have a field day in that basement of yours. Six hundred."

"Jesus, Ron," I said.

Future Landlord started looking positively apoplectic. "Couple a wise guys, aren't ya? Seven-fifty and that includes the asshole tax."

Ron turned and smiled at me, then said, "Seven hundred. And no phone calls to the Housing Board."

Future landlord took a long swig off his whiskey bottle, spat yet again, then stared at us for what seemed forever. Eventually he said, "you got the three thousand now?"

"Yep," Ron said.

"You're screwin' me wit'out the lube, but you got yerselves a deal."

"You won't regret it," Ron said, handing over a huge wad of bills.

Present Landlord blew an immense cloud of smoke in our direction. "I already fuckin' do. Move in whenever the hell you want."

"One last thing," Ron said. What's with all the berry bushes in the back yard?"

"Fuckin' farkleberries," our new landlord said. "That was my goddam aunt's doin'. She ruined tha place growing that shit, said they had 'medicinal properties,' whatever the fuck that means. She made pies from 'em and brewed some kinda sweet wine she sold as 'tonic' she sold to summa the righteous assholes that live around here. Stuff would get you drunker than hell after a couple a glasses, but then you'd have crazy fuckin' dreams all night and your shit would turn purple."

Ron and I looked at each other.

"Interesting," Ron said.

"Chop 'em down, burn 'em up, sculpt 'em into fuckin' topiary, for all I care. It's your place now and I don't wanna hear shit about it. We done here?"

"I think so. Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. … uh?"

"Otto. You'll get a lease in the mail and don't be dumb shits and fergit to sign it or nuthin'."

"Understood."

Otto the Landlord took another swig from his bottle, stuck it between his gargantuan thighs, coughed, and drove off leaving a noxious cloud of exhaust in his wake.

Chapter One of My 2012 NaNoWriMo Effort

MOONSHINES

"...the main appeal of alcoholism, and the reason why it will never be eliminated, is that it provides an opportunity for the honorable and even heroic failure."

~ J.G. Ballard

"This is one of the disadvantages of wine: it makes a man mistake words for thought."

~Samuel Johnson

"The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind."

~H.L. Mencken

"Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness."

~Seneca

"I drink only to make my friends seem interesting."

~Don Marquis

"Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink."

~Mark Twain

"Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink."

~W.H. Davies

"Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity."

~Sammy Davis, Jr.

"There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them."

~Terry Pratchett

"The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober."

~William Butler Yeats

Chapter One

It was a mad plan, a drunk plan, the kind of plan a couple of guys might hatch after consuming just enough alcohol to shut down logic and reason and go all artsy and right-brained. Our plan, as it turned out, simple, straightforward, and it made a certain kind of sense at the time. Unfortunately, we had no idea how wrong things could go.

It was a Thursday night and Ron-the-Nerd and I were hanging out at The White Chip, this seedy little bar and restaurant in the Fan District of Richmond, VA, drinking bourbon and Cokes, getting mildly plastered, and commiserating about the state of our lives.

"She gave me the boot," Ron said. "Kicked me out. Threw all my clothes into the front yard, trashed my CD collection, smashed my good laptop, took a knife to my favorite jacket, and worst of all, tore up all my model railroading magazines, the ones I've been collecting since high school, for God's sake. Used condoms get treated with more respect."

I snorted into my drink glass. "Used condoms don't work all night making HO scale model buildings on their girlfriend's birthday. Did you at least get her a present or some flowers?"

Ron sighed. "I forgot."

"And you wonder why she dumped you."

"Like you can talk."

Ron was right. I was in no position to criticize, having just been asked by my girlfriend to leave our apartment earlier in the week, but, honestly, it wasn't entirely my fault. I'm a freelance tech writer with a moderate case of OCD and that means sometimes I get so wrapped up in whatever projects I'm working on, professional or otherwise, that I forget little things like, well, paying attention to my significant other. In other words, I have no excuse. Margaret had every reason in the world to move me out and move herself on, and really, I understood. An information junkie with marginal social skills is a poor choice for a boyfriend.

As if on cue, "Love Stinks" by the J. Geils band started playing on the jukebox.

"So we're a couple of middle-aged geeks, footloose, fancy-free, and about as pathetic as one can get," I said. "We need... something. A place to live. A life. Something."

"Yeah. I imagine sofa-surfing gets kinda old after a while. But you know what we really need?"

"Besides an apartment and a total personality overhaul?"

"Another drink." Ron smiled and signaled to Tara, our usual waitress. "No, what we need is a distraction. Something new and different and exciting. Something that'll take our minds off things and change the course of our lives, maybe even make a little money in the process."

"Oh, dear God, you've been thinking again, haven't you?"

"I have, indeed."

"You know how dangerous that is. Remember the noodle incident?"

"First of all, no one ever proved anything and I will continue to deny it till the day I die. This time, however, I think I'm really on to something."

I sighed. "You're going to rope me into some kind of totally insane scheme worthy of Lucy Ricardo, aren't you?" I paused, then, with resignation, said, "tell me."

Ron leaned towards me and with an exaggerated whisper said, "Moonshine."

"What?" I gave Ron a raised eyebrow. "Say that again."

"Designer moonshine. John, I'm telling you, there's an unexploited market here that someone needs to take advantage of Real. Soon. Now."

"Designer moonshine. That's what you said."

"Well, moonshine, but we slap a fancy label on some fancy bottles, call it something hip and happening, sell it to hipsters and wealthy West Enders, create a kind of underground buzz, and start raking in the dough."

"'Hip and happening.' Who talks like that?"

Ron smiled and said, "anyway, as I see it, there are a couple of possibilities. One, the simple way, is we buy Everclear from the liquor store, flavor it or something, repackage it, and sell it at some ungodly inflated price. Or, and this could be the more cost-effective measure, we set up a still and make moonshine ourselves."

"Uh, you do realize that, either way, what you're suggesting is illegal as hell?"

"That's what makes it interesting, fun, and exciting! We get the thrill of making a product we're not supposed to, our customers get the thrill of doing something just a little bit naughty and illicit, and we take the cash to the bank."

"Naughty and illicit? What are you two reprobates up to now?" Tara had arrived with our drinks.

"We're going to revolutionize the liquor industry and make whiskey out of fermented psychoactive mushrooms," Ron said. "Never again will you have to worry about being arrested for drunk driving; you can fly home."

"Oh, yeah? That sounds... incredibly stupid."

"Ah, Tara," Ron said. "Dear, sweet, Tara. Tell me you wouldn't jump at the opportunity to get trashed on something sweetly illegal. Especially if it packed a magic kick."

Tara snickered, placed our drinks neatly on some cardboard coasters, and headed back to the bar. "Yeah, let me know how that works out for you," she said over her shoulder.

Ron stared longingly at Tara as she walked away.

"Cool it, Romeo," I said. "You're old enough to be her father. Hell, you're probably older than her father."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, but a man can dream, can't he?"

"Not like that, he can't. She'd kick your ass from here to the asteroid belt. Get back to the subject at hand: why moonshine?"

"Because everybody and their grandfather makes wine, craft beer is almost a cliché, and I'm thinking home distilling is the wave of the future. Sooner or later the government is going to legalize it, at least in small amounts, and when they do, we'll be right there with the goods. In the meantime, you know as well as I do that moonshine has a certain mystique. We'll have a built-in clientele of the curious and adventuresome."

"We'll have a built-in clientele of hillbillies and Sterno drinkers. And how do we make the stuff?"

"That's where you come in. You're the tech guy, you thrive on research, you'd be my first choice to map out the method. Me, I'm the hands-on guy, the guy who can build stuff. You figure out what we need and I'll put it together." Ron was starting to sound excited. "John, seriously, I need a project. My life sucks so hard right now and I need an escape. You're the only guy I know who could understand that."

I did, more than I cared to admit.

"Okay," I said, staring into space. "You can ferment just about anything with enough yeast, sugar and time. Prison inmates do it with nothing more than canned peaches and a convenient toilet. All distilling does is separate the alcohol from the crap so you've got something more concentrated."

"See? See? You're the guy; you know about this stuff."

"I know a little. Not enough. I'm going to have to do some serious reading first, like how to make a still and not get arrested in the process."

"There's that, but first we need a place to work. A nice cheap apartment or something, preferably with a basement."

I pondered this for a moment, then sighed. "Okay, I'll start checking Craigslist and read up on whiskey-making."

"I knew I could count on you."

"Why does that fail to inspire confidence?"